Circuit breakers are used in electric and electronic systems in which components must be protected from abnormal current conditions.
A typical circuit breaker using a tripping mechanism of the bimetallic type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,016 to Unger. In this known device a rocker button is provided for resetting the tripped circuit breaker. However, there is no possibility of manually switching the contacts from an "ON" to an "OFF" condition.
A unitary switch and circuit breaker is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,439 to Bowden et al. In this known device a rocker has a projecting arm to directly act on a bimetallic breaker strip for manually closing or opening a pair of contacts. In this case, the contacts have to be disposed close to the rocker side of the circuit breaker housing in order to render a direct actuation by the rocker possible. That may produce insulation problems due to the short distance between the contacts carrying large currents and the hand actuated rocker. Another problem may result from the fact that in this known device the closing or opening speed of the contacts when being switched corresponds directly to the rotational speed of the rocker. A slow or incomplete actuation of the rocker may result in a slight touching of the contacts or in an incomplete contact closing which may produce an undesirable arcing, while the rocker returns to its start position (so-called "tease-ability").